Reflexes
by Agent Otter
Summary: "She's very aware of the complete and perfect lack of sound, and then the heavy thud when she drops her carry-on. The noise echoes around the living room, bounces back as a whisper that tells her that something is very, very wrong."


Title: Reflexes  
  
Author: Agent Otter  
  
Rating: Uh... PG?  
  
Spoilers: This is post-"Telling", though I guess if you haven't seen that it doesn't give away too much. Just a little speculation, really.  
  
Summary: "She's very aware of the complete and perfect lack of sound, and then the heavy thud when she drops her carry-on. The noise echoes around the living room, bounces back as a whisper that tells her that something is very, very wrong."  
  
Author's note: I'm sure sure about the how's and why's and wherefore's. Just uh… sorta wanted to write this. So I did. And there you have it.  
  
She takes a cab home from the airport, and on the radio there's an old Bob Marley song that reminds her of college. It sticks in her head, and she hums it to herself as she carries her bags - carry-on duffle, and matching medium-sized suitcase with a telescoping handle and little wheels on the bottom - from the curb, over the little strip of grass to the sidewalk. She tips the bigger bag onto its wheels for the journey up the front walk, and it makes a steady clickety-clack-clickety-clack noise against the bricks.  
  
She frowns at the lawn as she passes; he's been promising to cut it for the past two weeks. She'd hoped he'd get to it while she was gone. But she admits that it's finals so she takes pity, and decides that she'll do it herself when she's settled back in. At the moment she's looking forward to changing out of her travel-wrinkled, slightly sweaty clothes, slipping into sweats, maybe one of his t-shirts, lounging on the couch and reading the paper over a glass of iced tea. She smiles at the thought as she slides her key into the lock and she doesn't even notice that she's still humming as she manhandles her bags in the front door.  
  
She does notice when the humming stops, though. She's very aware of the complete and perfect lack of sound, and then the heavy thud when she drops her carry-on. The noise echoes around the living room, bounces back as a whisper that tells her that something is very, very wrong.  
  
"Mike?" Her voice floats toward the kitchen, drifts up the stairs.  
  
There's no answer, but she doesn't expect any. It's only - her eyes flicker to the display on the VCR, squinting at the clock - three in the afternoon, on a weekday. He's never home this early. His last class is still in progress. She thinks about calling him at the school, interrupting, and she glances over at the phone, sitting on the little table in the hall. The answering machine next to it is lit up, the light flashing steadily to tell her that there are messages. The digital display says "4". These messages are almost always for Michael - her friends call her cell phone, but he doesn't even have one anymore - but she presses the button for playback, anyway.  
  
One. "Good morning, this is Christie with Travel Express Sweepstakes. Congratulations! You've won a free trip to exciting and scenic Hong Kong! Just call us now to claim your-" Telemarketers. She hits the skip button.  
  
Two. "Hello. This is Devon from the National Memory Centers. Do you or someone you know suffer from memory problems? Do you have trouble remembering important faces, names, dates-" Solicitors. She skips again.  
  
Three. "Mike?" This voice she knows, but she hasn't heard it in awhile. Michael and Eric don't talk much anymore. Not since the wedding. "Mike, are you there? Pick up if you're home. Come on, Mike, answer the phone. I wasn't sure if they'd... but I guess they did. So uh... I'll talk to you later. Bye."  
  
She frowns at the phone, wondering at the sense of urgency in Eric's voice. The fourth message begins to play, but no one speaks; there's a voice far away in the background, like a public address system, but she can't make out what it says, and then there's only a click and dialtone. A wrong number, she guesses, but she is hesitant to dismiss anything.  
  
The uneasy feeling is heading toward a panic attack. She's been feeling more and more relaxed the further she got from Chicago - to be honest, the further she gets from her quarrelling parents - and the closer she came to home. But everything is wrong here, somehow, and she can't imagine curling up with the paper and an iced tea. She picks up the phone.  
  
"Hi, Sharon," she says, when she's dialed and connected to the person on the other end. "I was wondering if I could interrupt Mike's class. It's kind of important."  
  
"Oh hi, Sarah," Sharon replies, her voice chipper even through the phone line. "Were you expecting him back today? We hadn't heard. Sal Roderick is still subbing for him today."  
  
She frowns, deeply. Subbing? Expecting him back? "Sal?" she says, dumbly, not managing to ask the question she wants to ask at all. "I've been out of town, Sharon, I haven't heard from Mike at all... he's not there?"  
  
There's a pause, and Sarah knows, painfully, that this news is going to be all over the teacher's lounge by the end of the school day. Trouble in paradise already... Mike and Sarah Vaughn no longer happy newlyweds. Film at eleven. "He called in for a leave of absence last week," Sharon informs her, slowly. "Nobody here talked to him, but he left a message saying there was some kind of family emergency. Didn't say when he'd be back. Is everything okay, Sarah?"  
  
No. Everything is wrong. Michael's gone and everyone's acting strangely and she's still got a Bob Marley song stuck in her head as if her brain's just been waiting to taunt her with the incongruity of it all.  
  
"I'm sure everything's fine," she says, instead of saying anything she might want to say. "I'll call Mike's mother and see where he is."  
  
"You let us know if there's anything we can do to help," Sharon chides, when what she really means to say is, 'You keep me updated because I hate to be without the latest gossip.'  
  
"Of course," Sarah lies, and then she murmurs a goodbye and hangs up the phone.  
  
She stands for a moment, still and staring at the light on the answering machine. It's a steady red now, no longer blinking, since none of the messages are new. At least one of those calls came after Michael left the house. Her frown deepens, and she hits the playback button again.  
  
"Good morning, this is Christie with Travel Express Sweepstakes. Congratulations! You've won a free trip to exciting and scenic Hong Kong! Just call us now to claim your spectacular Hong Kong vacation at 1-800-FREEFUN, and have your credit card ready for verification purposes!" Click. Beep. The strange synthetic voice of the digital answering machine informs her that the message was left at 12:02, four days ago. She's received calls from countless annoying telemarketers in her day, but she's rarely known any to call that late. No one's receptive to a sales pitch when they're trying to sleep.  
  
"Hello. This is Devon from the National Memory Centers. Do you or someone you know suffer from memory problems? Do you have trouble remembering important faces, names, or dates? Do you find it difficult to remember where you've been or what day it is? Millions of Americans suffer from memory problems, and here at the National Memory Centers, we're dedicated to helping people of all ages and backgrounds to restore what they've lost. Your donation will further research that is vital to the futures of-" Click. Beep. Either the machine has cut him off for going on too long, or the obviously computer-aided call disconnected early. The answering machine chimes in helpfully to let Sarah know that that call came at 12:10.  
  
The message from Eric begins again, awkward and stilted, and the machine informs her that it came much later, at 7:56 the next morning. The hang-up followed in the evening. That feeling of wrongness twists around in Sarah's stomach, then slides its way up into her throat.  
  
The cordless phone is still in her hand. She dials 1-800-FREEFUN.  
  
The phone rings and rings and rings, and she finds herself humming again, just to break the monotony. Finally there's a click, and a crisp voice says, "Travel Express Sweepstakes, may I have your confirmation number, please?"  
  
Sarah frowns, and worries at her bottom lip with her teeth. She listened to the whole message. That one wasn't cut off. They didn't give a confirmation number in the message; she was sure of it. "I haven't got one," she says, hesitantly. "There wasn't one in the message. But the reason I'm calling is-" She stutters to a stop, hesitates. Why is she calling? Suddenly she's not sure. "I was wondering," she finally fumbles on, "if my husband had called to claim our free trip to Hong Kong." She's not stupid. She knows there is no free trip. She knows these kinds of calls are nothing but a scam. And somehow she knows that there is no Travel Express Sweepstakes, either. "His name is Michael Vaughn," she supplies, into the silence on the other end of the line. "He might've called in around four days ago? I've been out of town." She bites her lip again, then blurts it out, trying to sound oblivious. "Wow, I mean, Hong Kong! I've never been. I've never been anywhere but Canada, and that hardly counts, right? And Mexico, that one time, but I hardly remember that because it was Spring Break. Hong Kong! Wow!"  
  
"I'm sorry, ma'am," the voice on the other end finally says, "but I'm afraid I can't give you any information about the Hong Kong trip or our lucky winners without a confirmation number. Maybe I could interest you in a tropical vacation? We have some great bargain prices right now on a complete vacation package to sunny Waikiki-"  
  
"No, thank you," she interrupts, before the sales pitch can go on. "Thanks anyway." She hangs up, and thinks that maybe the taste in her mouth comes from the unease twisting around in her throat.   
  
She doesn't call Michael's mother - family emergency, her ass - but digs into the drawer in the little side table that the phone sits on. There's some unopened junk mail in there, a few take-out menus, and she shoves them aside, hand closing on the little address book. She flicks it open with certainty to the page she wants, sees "Eric" scrawled in her own cursive handwriting, and punches the number beneath that name (with a little note beside it that says 'office') into the phone.  
  
  
  
It rings five times before Sarah hears a clatter of the handset being picked up on the other end, and a voice barks, "Weiss."  
  
He sounds annoyed. No, pissed off is more like it. He's only said one word but it was practically snarled. She hesitates for a moment, considers hanging up. The house is silent and empty and offers no advice.  
  
"Hello?" Eric says, impatiently. "Who is this?"  
  
"Hi, Eric," she manages to stutter out, before she's even realized that she's speaking. "Sorry... I'm sorry to bother you at work. It's just that I don't know where Michael is and, well, you left a message on the machine and there's these weird telemarketing calls, and I thought you might know where he was. Do you? Know where he is, I mean?"  
  
Eric's only reply is a sigh, and then she hears him faintly, as if he's trying to cover the receiver with his hand. "You didn't leave a message for your wife?" she hears him hiss. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" She doesn't hear the reply, just a pause, then Eric's snarled, "No fucking way, man. Here. Jesus. Talk to her. I'll be outside."  
  
There's a clatter - probably the handset being tossed onto the desk - and then a long pause, filled with the background murmur of ambient noise. Another clatter, and she can almost feel the rush of air brush her cheek as he sighs into the phone. "Sarah?" Michael's voice says.  
  
"Yes," she replies, unable to think of anything appropriately sarcastic to say. "What are you doing at Eric's office? Is everything okay? Sharon said there was some family emergency but there weren't any messages from you or anything and I-"  
  
"I forgot," Mike interrupts. "I'm sorry. I just... I forgot to call."  
  
"It's okay," she hastens to assure him. "I'm sure you were just... busy. I guess. Are you going to tell me what's going on?"  
  
"I... later," he fumbles. "We'll talk about it later. I um... it's important that I be here, right now."  
  
Sarah frowns. "Be there? At Eric's office? I thought you two weren't even talking anymore. And, he's an accountant. I mean, what sort of emergency could an accountant have? Mike, I really need you to tell me what's happening. You're scaring me." She realizes it's true even as she says it. Her heart is hammering in her chest and she's feeling a little dizzy. She thinks it's because some part of her knows exactly what's happening, knows exactly what's wrong. She's losing him. No. She's lost him already. And she doesn't know why.  
  
"I forgot," he repeats, his voice a murmur, and she knows, too, that he isn't talking about forgetting to call her anymore. "I really love you, you know?" he blurts, after a moment's pause. "I do. You have to believe me."  
  
"I do," she answers, and she isn't lying, but she knows too that the subtle shades of love number in the millions, the billions even, that one color can be wildly different from another. That the colors can change as rapidly as the mood rings her roommate wore in college. He loves her, and she loves him, but she's beginning to get the feeling that it doesn't matter. Something has happened. Everything has changed. There's something that's bigger than her and him, and it's opened up between them with all the deniability of a continental divide. "Well, I just wanted to make sure you were okay," she says, even though she knows that he is not, and she is not, and she wonders whether she even knows what 'okay' is. "Um, let me know when you'll be able to come home? I'm going to go out and mow the lawn."  
  
"Sorry," he replies, and she can almost hear the wince. "I forgot to do it."  
  
"That's okay," she says. "Stay safe, alright?"  
  
"Yeah," he says. His reply is absent, distracted. She can hear someone else in the room with him, saying something. "I've got to go," he says. "I'll call you. Make it up to you. I'm really sorry."  
  
"Okay," she answers. "Love you." But she's sure that he doesn't hear, and the line is dead again before she's finished the last syllable. She puts the phone down and just stands for a moment, fingers against the plastic.  
  
Then she picks up her luggage from the hallway, drags it awkwardly into the bedroom, and decides to unpack later. She changes out of her travel-wrinkled clothes and slips into a pair of sweatpants and one of Michael's faded Kings t-shirts. She carries the newspaper that she bought at LAX back out into the living room, drops it on the table and pads barefoot into the kitchen to pour herself a tall glass of iced tea. When she settles on the couch, she puts her feet up and uses the remote to flick the stereo on. She turns the volume up a little and lets the sound of Michael's favorite jazz station cover up the sound of her life falling apart. 


End file.
